Satori Junk - Venezia
A new release from Italian label Industrial Ölocaust Recordings, the latest release by an Italian band called Satori Junk. Not industrial, noise, ambient, etc... but gothic-tinged epic-doom metal! It's not actually what you would expect from this label! The band has been around since 2015 and has released 2 albums so far, and this mini-album is therefore their third release.
Let us get to the interesting cover artwork, u get this nice thick textured paper that has been carefully folded, you open it, and all the cool information is beautifully printed/stamped inside with the CD as well. Really love the cool chosen font for the letters! Lovely aesthetic feel so far! All this is being locked inside by the iconic Industrial Ölocaust Recordings wax seal offcourse!
The concept of the album is inspired by the events surrounding the Plague, which killed approximately 50000 people in 1630, in Venezia.
This mini-album has come out as a CD and as a cassette. The CD has only 1 track on it, and on the cassette, this one track has been spread out on the two sides of the cassette.
The album starts with the sound of wind and watery waves, is it the sound of how plague-ridden rats were traveling on ships? There is also the sound of crowes later on, and something... scittering about on small feet. Steps made by booted heels, and the painful sound of something fighting to breathe. The booted heels start to run, while the sound of a heart is beating faster and faster. Behind all this, there is a cool-sounding hammer-horror sort of string arrangement.
After all this subtle bass guitar, church bells, and evocative drums are added. And then the heavy funeral-doom metal sound kicks in! Not that far away from Electric Wizard, Danzig I'm also thinking of this band called Zombi as well. Lovely-sounding melancholic piano work and some horror retro-feeling organs are added. Quite magnificent!
There aren´t any vocal parts here, but I think the piano has that role. And the piano works great with the metal guitars, love how the atmospheric tension gets more and more dramatic and epic. Any fan of classic Italian horror (Romero, Fulci) would love this!
About halfway through it gets more... psychedelic. Retro vintage sci-fi synth and electronic sounds and warped acid-drenched ambient soundscapes. Atmospheric vintage psychedelic guitar work is added, something which takes me back to bands like Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, and even Fleetwood Mac. Some really dramatic solo guitar work later on with an almost story-telling-like quality. Quite obvious that this band works so incredibly good together!
It´s a 30+ breathtaking thing, even for listeners who aren´t a big fan of doom-metal. The band has a large repertoire of various styles and sounds, and they incorporate it perfectly into this epic mini-album. Perfectly balanced between soundtrack-driven ideas and incredibly talented musicianship, as I mentioned earlier. These guys know how to work together, at least it sounds like it. As for me, I´m sitting here thinking. Think I need to buy their former albums, I really loved this album.
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